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Edited on Tue Jun-22-04 01:22 PM by Minstrel Boy
DU has been, I think, the premier sounding board for challenging the official story, and a great resource for 9/11 skeptics. Here's a compilation of some DU 9/11 threads I'd bookmarked, for the next time someone starts yukking it up about how LIHOP/MIHOP is nothing but groundless tinfoil.DEEP BACKGROUND9/11: The BCCI ConnectionYet there is a curious continuity here - one that highlights the global infrastructure that has made 9/11 such a successful worldwide "op", with a legend whose global parameters defy the perceptions of even the most dogged investigators. As Peter Dale Scott has argued in great and persuasive detail, the "deep political structure" of American society - and I would argue that this now applies globally - is permeated by an interwoven nexus between political/corporate elites and an organized criminal subculture, whereby certain political or business arrangements are made in an extra-legal sphere, beyond the reach of sanction or salience. Although this dual-purpose netherworld has been with us for over a century - and roughly parallels the rise of an American industrial "Establishment" of which the Bushes and Rockefellers are most representative - for our purposes, we will date the true globalization of this "deep political structure" with the creation of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, better known as BCCI. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=658476Guess who ties ENRON to BCCI? Money laundering, as Chairperson Gramm testified, is not even a violation of the Commodities Futures Trading Act. Incredibly, it appears that the CFTC and the self-regulatory organizations have never even made a criminal referral for possible money laundering....http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=7548&forum=DCForumID70&archive=George W Bush connection to the BCCI scandal After dominating the financial news throughout the 1990s, the BCCI is now at the center of the financial network put in place by Osama bin Laden's main supporters.
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Ghaith Pharon sold a part in his stake to BCCI to (Bush financier) Khalid bin Mahfhouz and his brothers, who became 20% shareholders in the bank. BCCI also had ties with Abu Nidal, with drug lord Pablo Esobar, Noreiga.
In addition to BCCI, Islamic Charities have been and are used to finance terrorist networks, including Hamas. Khalid bin Mahfouz's son, Abdul Rahman, is the Sudanese branch manager of Muwafaq, supspected of helping to organize the assassination attempt of Hosni Mubarak, and also accused by the CIA of having received funds via the Saudi National Commercial Bank, headed at the time by Khalid. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=157573#157909Connecting The Dots: Bush..Bath..Bin LadenSalem bin Laden appointed James Bath, a close friend of Bush who served with him in the Air National Guard, as his representative in Houston, Texas.... http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1127704Spring 1971 Bush Using National Guard F102 to Shuttle "Tropical Plants"Once or twice a month, Bush would announce that he had flight duty and off he would go, sometimes taking his F-102 from Houston to Orlando and back. "It was really quite amazing," Knudtzon said. "Here was this young guy making acquisitions of tropical plants and then up and leaving to fly fighter planes."http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1499028Spies hide as Bank faces BCCI chargesThen there is the small matter of the role played by Britain's intelligence services, whose relationship with BCCI has long been questioned. Did MI6 use accounts at the secretive bank to pay sources and operatives around the world? Did BCCI channel Western funds to Mujahideen fighters in the Eighties - or even, as some conspiracy theorists have surmised, to Osama bin Laden? http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=11956&forum=DCForumID61Jonathan Bush's Riggs Bank fined for money laundering, proved for financing terrorismThe Federal Reserve ordered Riggs Bank's parent company Friday to take steps to prevent money laundering after the bank was fined $25 million in connection with a probe into possible links to terrorism financing.
The action came a day after Treasury Department regulators levied the record-setting fine against Riggs for its handling of millions of dollars in foreign-held accounts.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1602186Strauss, Neocons and TerrorStrauss himself taught that under certain circumstances real men "may be forced into a mere negation of the universal and homogeneous state, into a negation not enlightened by any positive goal, into a nihilistic negation." He went on to elaborate that " that nihilistic revolution may be the only action on behalf of man’s humanity, the only great and noble deed that is possible once the universal and homogeneous state has become inevitable . The successful revolt the primitive horde." In European thought, nihilism was often equated to anarchist bomb-throwers; the nihilistic revolution was a synonym for fascism and Nazism. Strauss endorsed all this. His nihilistic revolution opens the door to terrorism, war, mayhem, genocide, and much more. He explicitly endorses actions that would take mankind back to the primal horde, that is to say the hunting and gathering society of the old stone age, of the cave men. We must also recall that Strauss’s written doctrine is always more cautious than the oral tradition he transmitted to his direct and indirect disciples, among whom are the neocons now running the US government. The neocon doctrine is explicitly pro-terrorist. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1780890The Myth Of Al QaedaYes, there are legitimate Muslim-led terrorist groups out there. But they are spread far and wide, are nationalistic, and are easily infiltrated by the agents provocateurs of "Al Qaeda" to lead them down the path of destruction and mayhem. These local groups are used and then discarded after the deed, and the terrorists the authorities then round up are usually clueless, brainwashed, local criminals who are effectively cut off from the true leadership of "Al Qaeda".
When you think Al Qaeda, you should also think CIA and MI5.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1059753PRE-9/11Were these warnings specific enough, Condi?Weeks before 9/11, urgent and detailed warnings from the Taliban, the Germans, the French, the Egyptians, the French, the British....http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1375723Hijackers trained at US military basesAir Force spokesman Col. Ken McClellan said soon after the attacks that a man whose name was Mohamed Atta had attended the International Officer's School at Maxwell/Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala.... A man with the name Abdulaziz Alomari attended Brooks Air Force Base Aerospace Medical School in San Antonio, Texas. Abdulaziz Alomari was reportedly a former Saudi Arabian pilot.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1296012#1297012CIA met with Bin Laden 2 months prior to 9/11Two months before September 11 Osama bin Laden flew to Dubai for 10 days for treatment at the American hospital, where he was visited by the local CIA agent, according to the French newspaper Le Figaro.
The disclosures are known to come from French intelligence which is keen to reveal the ambiguous role of the CIA, and to restrain Washington from extending the war to Iraq and elsewhere.
Bin Laden is reported to have arrived in Dubai on July 4 from Quetta in Pakistan with his own personal doctor, nurse and four bodyguards, to be treated in the urology department. While there he was visited by several members of his family and Saudi personalities, and the CIA.
The CIA chief was seen in the lift, on his way to see Bin Laden, and later, it is alleged, boasted to friends about his contact. He was recalled to Washington soon afterwards.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1111999Heroin, Al Qaeda and the Florida Flight SchoolHopsicker is still researching the three Huffman-trained 9/11 pilots, who he says had financial, drug-trafficking and military intelligence ties to the U.S. government. He is developing suspicions that Atta and the entire school were involved with Osama bin Laden in heroin trafficking. Hopsicker reports that on July 25, 2000, the DEA in Orlando discovered more than 30 pounds of heroin inside a Learjet owned by Wally Hilliard, owner of Huffman Aviation. Earlier that month, on July 3, Atta and Marwan Al-Shehri had started flight lessons at Huffman. Hopsicker claims it's not a coincidence that Atta was allegedly importing heroin with Hilliard's help, selling Afghanistan's notorious opium and heroin to finance the Taliban. Hilliard would not be interviewed for this story.
"The apparatus that Osama bin Laden set into place along with the CIA back in the '80s, still exists," Hopsicker says. "The FBI is protecting an operation set in place back in the '80s...a money-laundering device to funnel money to the Afghan Mujahedeen and to flood this country with heroin."
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That the Taliban made money from drugs is no surprise. But according to Hopsicker, the Venice operation was "protected" by top officials in the same U.S. government that created the Taliban (when the Taliban were known as the Mujahedeen, fighting the Soviets). Hopsicker says that when low-level DEA agents burst into Hilliard's plane on July 25, an embarrassed DEA higher-up was sitting in the co-pilot seat. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1294206May 8, 2001: Cheney begins coordinating response to domestic attacksSo here's Cheney, PNACer and oil man, already chairing a secretive energy commission (read its implications for military policy: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4458.htm ), being named to head up a new agency which will "coordinate all federal programs for responding to domestic attacks"....http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1007969Why did FBI Special Agent Frasca suppress field agent terrorist memos?Special Agent Dave Frasca occupies a very important position mid-way between the Bush cabinet/FBI leadership and the FBI agents on the ground in various American cities. He is in the unusual position of taking important findings of intended radical Bin Laden-type terrorist actions to his supervisors, especially the heads of the FBI. Clearly, he was, along with the various world intelligence agencies, able to forward enough information through his supervisors to raise concerns with President Bush himself in July 2001.
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Not only did Dave Frasca not share the information about Moussaoui to other appropriate intelligence/law enforcement authorities, he also, according to Rowley "never disclosed to the Minneapolis agents that the Phoenix Division had, only three weeks earlier, warned of Al Qaeda operatives in flight schools seeking flight training for terrorists purposes!" (Rowley's memo to FBI, May 21, 2002 p. 3) It is of course impossible to believe that Dave Frasca on his own, is just sitting on this information and not doing anything with it, unless ordered to do so.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1297030#1297091Mohamed Atta loved pork chops, and 49 other things you may not know11. Atta, Keller, a stripper named Linda and two Germans, Peter and Johan, partied for three days in Key West. Atta paid for everything. Rented three rooms, one just for the men’s luggage, which Keller says contained drugs. The men had a business meeting the women were not permitted to attend. Met with people, Keller says, who flew in just to meet Atta. Somber and quiet after meeting. (Key West Airport a known drug transit point. The Sheriff used to be under orders to keep the dope sniffing dogs off airplanes, and at one time even sent patrol cars to escort the drugs to Miami.)
12. Atta was already a licensed pilot when he arrived in the US. Licenses from many different countries. He had the privileges of an instructor while he was at Huffman Aviation, and may have helped pilot South American drug runs.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1433886New options put fear factor into trading (9/11 options trading)After an exhaustive study, Allen Poteshman, a professor of finance at the University of Illinois, has confirmed news reports shortly after Sept. 11, 2001:
Trading in options on airline stocks AMR and UAL indicates someone profited from advance word of the terrorist attacks.
"There is evidence of unusual option market activity in the days leading up to Sept. 11," Poteshman writes in a paper posted on the Internet that goes deeper than the initial reports.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x509119Bush knew. Now, do you?Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, is a long-time regional proxy of the CIA, and its principal agent for dealing with Mujaheddin groups during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It’s revealed in the Fall of 2001 that Pakistani ISI chief Mahmood Ahmed had authorized a $100,000 wire transfer to Mohammed Atta. This same Ahmed was in Washington for a week, meeting with top US officials, at the time of the attacks. After the revelation he takes an early retirement. There is no report of him ever having been questioned by US authorities. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=995140SEPTEMBER 11"bizarre coincidence": Cheney monitors crash simulation morning of 9/11In what the government describes as a bizarre coincidence, one U.S. intelligence agency was planning an exercise last Sept. 11 in which an errant aircraft crashed into one of its buildings....http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1298401New bombshell: on 9/11 Pentagon conducted live-fly hijacking wargameOne of at least five wargames/simulations running on the morning of 9/11, under the auspices of the Joint Chiefs, was a live-fly exercise of a response to multiple hijackings. Numerous aircraft, military and civilian, were used in the exercise. With many fighters already committed to other wargames, the number remaining to respond to a threat were outnumbered by the number of apparently hijacked planes. And with the transponders switched off, identitifying the genuine threat from the simulated became even more difficult.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1694495Rookie In Command Of National Mil. Command Ops Center On 9/11National Military Command Center ops director asked newly-qualified substitute on Sept. 10 to stand his watch at 8:30 am on Sept. 11 http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x631352Another standdown: security at WTC on 9/11The World Trade Center was destroyed just days after a heightened security alert was lifted at the landmark 110-story towers, security personnel said yesterday.
Daria Coard, 37, a guard at Tower One, said the security detail had been working 12-hour shifts for the past two weeks because of numerous phone threats. But on Thursday, bomb-sniffing dogs were abruptly removed.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x10267#10268Power down at WTC 2 for 36 hours on 9/8 - 9/9"On the weekend of 9/8,9/9 there was a 'power down' condition in WTC tower 2, the south tower. This power down condition meant there was no electrical supply for approx 36 hrs from floor 50 up. I am aware of this situation since I work in IT and had to work with many others that weekend to ensure that all systems were cleanly shutdown beforehand ... and then brought back up afterwards. The reason given by the WTC for the power down was that cabling in the tower was being upgraded ...
"Of course without power there were no security cameras, no security locks on doors and many, many 'engineers' coming in and out of the tower. I was at home on the morning of 9/11 on the shore of Jersey City, right opposite the Towers, and watching events unfold I was convinced immediately that something was happening related to the weekend work."http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x11081Odigo says workers were warned two hours before attacksOdigo, the instant messaging service, says that two of its workers received messages two hours before the Twin Towers attack on September 11 predicting the attack would happen, and the company has been cooperating with Israeli and American law enforcement, including the FBI, in trying to find the original sender of the message predicting the attack.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=460829&mesg_id=460829Jeb Bush seized flight school records at 2 AM on September 12Why did Jeb Bush and federal agents seize records from Huffman Aviation - Florida flight school of Mohammed Atta, and other 9/11 hijackers - in the middle of the night following the attacks of September 11th and load them onto a C-130? And why did Jeb Bush know, hours after the attack, where to look?
Whatever secrets Dekkers may possess about the terrorists, records from his flight school were deemed sensitive enough to have merited being escorted back to Washington by Florida Governor Jeb Bush aboard a C-130 cargo plane, which left Sarasota less than 24 hours after the September 11 attack.
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"I sat down with two Southern lawmen, a current sheriff and his immediate predecessor. These two guys looked me dead in the eye and said that, based on what they have seen with a lot of CIA-connected covert operations in the area, the CIA was somehow involved in, if not responsible for, the World Trade Center attacks. You might expect some wild-eyed leftist radical to say that. But these are two Southern sheriffs. They have spent years watching CIA activities that they could not interfere with." http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1328855Raytheon, and Hani Hanjour's flight of fantasyHani Hanjour, the alleged pilot of Flight 77, was so unskilled, he'd been denied a Cessna just three weeks before. He'd tried to learn to fly for years, but his instructor found him hopeless. Yet three weeks later, Hanjour is said to have piloted a commercial airliner at 500 miles per hour so aerobatically a flight controller believed she was following the path of an F-18, perform a 270 degree spiralling descent of 5,000 feet over Washington in a matter of seconds, going out of his way to hit the Navy side of the five-storey high Pentagon: the one side which was virtually empty and undergoing reconstruction, and the only side whose exterior wall had been hardened to withstand attack.
A USA Today story from October 2001, announced that Raytheon had remote-flown a FedEx 727 to a safe landing on a New Mexico air force base in August 2001, without a pilot.
On at least three of the four sparsely occupied hijacked flights, there was a Raytheon employee. Including, on Flight 77, the plane which hit the Pentagon, Stanley Hall, director of program management for Raytheon's Electronics Warfare Division. A colleague called him "our dean of electronic warfare."http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=976740&mesg_id=976740POST-9/11DOJ Asked FBI Translator To Change Pre 9-11 Intercepts Sibel Edmonds: "Attorney General John Ashcroft told me 'he was invoking State Secret Privilage and National Security' when I told the FBI I wanted to go public with what I had translated from the pre 9-11 intercepts".http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=442067&mesg_id=442067Explosive new Sibel Edmonds interview"...the issue, on one side, boils down to money--a lot of money. And it boils down to people and their connections with this money....
"You get to a point where it gets very complex, where you have money laundering activities, drug related activities, and terrorist support activities converging at certain points and becoming one.
"...if, and when this issue gets to be, under real terms, investigated, you will be seeing certain people that we know from this country standing trial; and they will be prosecuted criminally."http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1555133&mesg_id=1555133State Dept. Quashed 9/11 Links To Global Drug TradeEven as a judge prepares to permanently silence her, a former FBI translator of intelligence has implicated the US State Department in quashing investigations which had linked the 9/11 terrorist network to a global drug trafficking ring.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=610235&mesg_id=610235FAA Official Scrapped Tape of 9/11 Controllers' StatementsThe taping began before noon on Sept. 11 at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center, in Ronkonkoma, on Long Island, but it was later destroyed by an F.A.A. quality-assurance manager, who crushed the cassette in his hand, cut the tape into little pieces and dropped them in different trash cans around the building, according to a report made public today by the inspector general of the Transportation Department.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=535331&mesg_id=535331Skinny Osama or Fat Osama: which is his best look?Remember the last, and only time, we saw Fat Osama? http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1719399&mesg_id=1719399Grover Norquist Linked to TerroristsGrover Norquist, whom most conservatives know as Executive Director of the College Republicans, boardmember of the NRA, and head of Americans for Tax Reform, has been exposed as helping Muslim groups and individuals who finance and support Islamic terrorism gain access to the Bush White House.
Norquist has also been exposed as the founder of the Islamic Insitute, a group believed to be funded by foreign governments, Wahhab Islam elements in Saudi Arabia, and U.S. Muslim groups recently raided by a special Treasury Department task force for funding Al Qaeda and Palestinian terrorists. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=581304The 9/11 whistleblowers-get-screwed data dump Michael Springman, 22-year State Department veteran, and former head of the visa bureau in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Claims he was repeatedly overruled by high-level State Department officials to issue visas to bin Laden recruits so they could receive training in the United States. Says this continued at least until the summer of 2001. (Notably, 15 of the 9/11 hijackers first entered the US through Jeddah.) Springman protested, and was fired. Springman says he believes that the victims of 9/11 "may have been sacrificed in order to further wider US geopolitical objectives."http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1293947Dept. head who blocked Colleen Rowley given awardAt a quiet little ceremony earlier this month, Marion (Spike) Bowman was one of nine people in the bureau to receive an award for "exceptional performance." The award carries with it a cash bonus of 20 to 35 percent of the recipient's salary and a framed certificate signed by the president.
What does this have to do with Rowley?
Bowman heads the FBI's National Security Law Unit. That's the unit that blocked Minneapolis agents from pursuing their suspicions about Moussaoui.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1378478#13791089/11 director gave evidence to own inquiryThe panel set up to investigate why the United States failed to prevent the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, faced angry questions Thursday after revelations that two of its own senior officials were so closely involved in the events under investigation that they have been interviewed as part of the inquiry.
Philip Zelikow, the commission's executive director, worked on the Bush-Cheney transition team as the new administration took power, advising his longtime associate and former boss, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, on the incoming National Security Council. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=316529Ashcroft may face prison over 9/11 cover-up, says Daniel EllsbergEllsberg says that if Edmonds' allegations are confirmed, the current Attorney General could be judged obstructive and share the fate of A.G. John Mitchell --who in Ellsberg v. Mitchell famously tried to squelch Ellsberg's 1971 revelations, and served prison time over the affair.
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"I'm not an expert on all this," he admits. "But I am increasingly open to the explanation that people in the administration did see this coming... and may have indeed reduced some obstacles..,or opened the door, in effect...."http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x626504Bush's 9/11 telephone logs don't existMr. Kean: Well, the testimony we have is from the president and from the vice president and from Condi Rice, who says she overheard part of that phone call. The phone logs don't exist, because they evidently got so fouled up in communications that the phone logs have nothing. So that's the evidence we have.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1819543Bush's evidence of demeanorSee for yourself.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=918713
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